Privilege is here, and with privilege goes responsibility.
I hope that road will not be the less traveled by, and I hope your commitment to the Great Republic’s interest in the years to come will be worthy of your long inheritance since your beginning.
The men who create power make an indispensable contribution to the Nation’s greatness, but the men who question power make a contribution just as dispensable, especially when that questioning is disinterested, for they determine whether we use power or power uses us.
When power leads man towards arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the areas of man’s concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of his existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses.
And the nation which disdains the mission of art invites the fate of Robert Frost’s hired man, the fate of having “nothing to look backward to with pride, and nothing to look forward to with hope.”
– John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Remarks at Amherst College, 26 October 1963
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